Faster, higher - but freer?

Faster, higher - but freer?

Friday 11 July 2008 19.01 EDT
First published on Friday 11 July 2008 19.01 EDT

An enormous amount is riding on the Olympic games in Beijing, which are now just a month away. When China first sought the games, it was still reeling from Tiananmen Square and the way it was covered around the world. The country lost its first bid, but in its second Liu Qi, the mayor of Beijing, made "the further development of our human rights cause" an explicit part of his presentation. Whether it was a pledge, or a promise, or in the text of the bid itself, is open to debate. The bid has never been published. With Tibet simmering uneasily in the background, up to 30,000 journalists are about to descend on the country to test the mayor's words.

The manicured monumentalism of the opening ceremony will be the crowning symbol of the country's emergence on the world stage. It will be less of a coming-out parade for Chinese leaders than a coronation. For the very same reasons, western leaders rightly remain uneasy about giving their imprimatur to a regime which jails dissidents, persecutes religious groups, backs Burma and bankrolls Darfur. The comparison with Hitler's games in 1936 is hysterical, but the games in Moscow in 1980 or in Seoul in 1988 both come to mind. Nicolas Sarkozy told Hu Jintao at the G8 summit that he would be attending the opening ceremony as president of the EU as well as his own country, but the merest hint of trouble could have him scurrying for his jet. In fact his pilot may be advised to keep the engines running. Nor is Gordon Brown made any less vulnerable by turning up only at the end. If a major incident happens before then he will have to climb out of a hole of his own making. Have these leaders squandered their leverage by turning up, or will they use their attendance to pull those levers?

George Bush has undoubtedly wasted his political capital, by saying he would be attending as a sports fan. Just before he did so, a court in Shanghai granted parole to a Chinese-born US citizen, Jude Shao, who had served half of a 16-year sentence on tax evasion and fraud charges. His supporters said he had refused to pay a bribe sought by tax officials. If Washington's pressure can effect the release of a US citizen, what is its responsibility to Chinese human rights activists like Hu Jia, who got three and a half years in prison in April for publishing an open letter, "The Real China and the Olympics"?

Far from advancing the cause of human rights, China has used the run-up to the games as an excuse to clamp down on them, as a book from Human Rights Watch shows. The relative freedoms enjoyed a year ago by an emerging group of commercial lawyers, journalists and petitioners have disappeared. In the past decade these activists have pushed the envelope by using email and the internet to make their voices heard. Today the government is using the same tools to clamp down on their activities. The envelope is pushing back.

But this is not just a game of cat and mouse between small groups of activists and a much larger army of state apparatchiks. There are strong currents of nationalism swirling in the Chinese blogosphere, resentful of how events in Tibet were depicted outside the country. They carry an implied threat to the western media: muck up our games with your coverage and you may find that, after they are over, there will be a backlash. China promised western journalists that they could travel and operate freely around the country (except Tibet), but that freedom is due to expire in October. It should instead be extended to all journalists in China. The course of the games will be determined by how the Chinese government tackles the inevitable displays of protest. But it could make a pre-emptive strike by releasing the 130 prisoners it still holds from the Tiananmen Square protests, in an Olympic amnesty. That would help the games emerge from the shadow of those dark days.